predictions not infrequently changing the course of that country’s
history. To his daughter, the prophet-priestess Athryte, was the great
Rameses II indebted for the prophecy which led him into his conquering
and victorious career. Known as one of the four great conquerors of
antiquity,[35] reigning sixty years, he greatly added to the wealth and
renown of Egypt.
The class of priestesses called Sibyls were early known in Egypt,
India, and other portions of the ancient world. They were regarded
as the most holy order of the priesthood and held to be in direct
communion with the gods, who through them revealed secrets to the lower
order of priests; the word Sibyl originating from Syros, i. e. God. The
learned Beale defines Sibyl as thought, therefore a woman in possession
of God’s thought. The names of ten renowned Sibyls have come down to
our day. The Sibyline Books for many years governed the destinies of
Rome. Oracles were rendered from the lips of a priestess known as the
Pythia; the famous Delphian Shrine for ages ruling the course of kings
and nations.
Upon the monuments of Egypt, those indisputable historic records,
queens alone are found wearing the triple crown, significant of
ecclesiastical, judicial and civil power, thus confirming the statement
of Diodorus that queens were shown greater respect and possessed
more power than kings: the pope alone in modern times claiming the
emblematic triple crown. A comparison between the men and women of the
common people of this country, shows no less favorably for the latter.
Women were traders, buying and selling in the markets while the men
engaged in the more laborious work of weaving at home. Woman’s medical
and hygienic knowledge is proven by the small number of infantile
deaths.[36] At the marriage ceremony the husband promised obedience to
the wife in all things, took her name, and his property passed into her
control; according to Wilkinson great harmony existed in the marriage
relation, the husband and wife sitting upon the same double chair in
life and resting at death in the same tomb.
Montesquieu says:
It must be admitted although it shocks our present customs,
that among the most polished peoples, wives have always had
authority over their husbands. The Egyptians established it by
law in honor of Isis, and the Babylonians did the same in time
of Semiramis. It has been said of the Romans that they ruled
all nations but obeyed their wives.
Crimes against women were rare in Egypt and when occurring were most
severely punished.[37] Rameses III caused this inscription to be
engraved upon his monuments:
To unprotected woman there is freedom to wander through the
whole country wheresoever she list without apprehending
danger.
A woman was one of the founders of the ancient Parsee religion, which
taught the existence of but a single god, thus introducing monotheism
into that rare old kingdom. Until the introduction of Christianity
woman largely preserved the liberty belonging to her in the old
civilizations. Of her position under Roman law before this period Maine
(Gaius) says:
The jurisconsults had evidently at this time assumed the
equality of the sexes as a principle of the law of equity.
The situation of the Roman woman whether married or single
became one of great personal and proprietary independence; but
Christianity tended somewhat from the commencement to narrow
this remarkable liberty. The prevailing state of religious
sentiment may explain why modern jurisprudence has adopted
these rules concerning the position of women which belong to
an imperfect civilization. No society which preserves any
tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to
married women the personal liberty conferred on them by middle
Roman law. Canon law has deeply injured civilization.
Rome not only secured remarkable personal and proprietary rights to
woman, but as Vestal Virgin, she held the highest priestly office. No
shrine equalled that of the Vestals in sanctity; none was so honored
by the state. To their care the sacred Fire was entrusted, and also
the Palladium; those unknown articles upon whose preservation not
alone the welfare but the very existence of Rome was held to depend.
The most important secrets of state were entrusted to them and their
influence in civil affairs was scarcely secondary to their religious
authority. In troubled times, in civil wars, in extreme emergencies
of the commonwealth they acted as ambassadors, or were chosen umpires
to restore peace between the parties. In state ceremonies, in the
most solemn, civil or religious meetings they performed important
duties. They were superior to the common law or the authority of the
consul. The most important secrets were entrusted to them, wills of
the emperors and documents of state confided to their care; offenses
against them were punished with death. If meeting a criminal on his way
to execution, he was pardoned as a direct intervention of heaven in
his behalf. Among their important privileges was exemption from public
taxes, the right to make a will, internment within the city walls, the
right to drive in the city where no other carriage was allowed; even
the consuls were obliged to make room for them to pass. Chosen from
noble families when between the ages of six and ten, their terms of
service was thirty years.
The order of Vestal Virgins flourished eleven hundred years, having
been founded seven hundred years before the Christian era and
continuing four hundred years afterwards. But those women all young,
all between the ages of six years and forty, so closely guarded the
secrets of the Penetralia that to this day they still remain as
unknown as when in their charge. The order was destroyed in the fourth
century, but the ruins of their temple recently discovered prove that
when obliged to flee from the sacred enclosure they first demolished
the most holy portion where the secrets of Rome were hidden.[38]
Recent important archaeological discoveries at the Atrium Vertae in
the Forum, corroborate history in regard to the high position and
extraordinary privileges of the Vestals. Several statues have been
found representing the sacred maiden with the historic fillet about her
head and the cord beneath her breast. Medallions worn upon the breast
of their horses have also been unearthed. The wealth of the order was
extremely great, both its public and private property being exempt from
that conscription which in times of war reached all but a few favored
individuals.
The names by which Imperial Rome was known were all feminine; Roma,
Flora, Valentia; nearly its first and greatest goddess was Vesta.[39]
Sacred and secret were originally synonymous terms. All learning was
sacred, consequently secret, and as only those possessed of learning
were eligible to the priestly office it is readily seen that knowledge
was a common heritage of primitive women. Letters, numbers, astrology,
geography and all branches of science were secrets known only to
initiates. The origin of the most celebrated mysteries, the Eleusinian,
and those of Isis, were attributed to woman, the most perfect temple of
ancient or modern times, the Parthenon, or Temple of the Virgins, was
dedicated to the goddess Minerva.
Chryseis was priestess of Juno in Argo. This office was of great civil
as well as religious importance regulating their dates and chronology.
To the present day in China woman assists at the altar in ancestral
worship, the prevailing form of religious adoration. The mother of a
family is treated with the greatest respect[40] and the combined male
and female principle is represented in god under the name Fou-Fou,
that is, Father-Mother.[41] When the Emperor acting as high priest
performs certain rites he is called Father-Mother of the people. Woman
is endowed with the same political powers as man.[42] The wife presides
like her husband at family councils, trials, etc. As Regent, she
governs the Empire with wisdom, dignity, power, as was shown during the
co-regency of the Empresses of the East and of the West, their power
continuing even after the promotion of a boy-heir to the throne.
A Thibetan woman empire extant between the VI and VII centuries A.D.
is spoken of by Chinese writers. An English author, Cooper, seems
to have visited this region, meeting with an amusing venture while
there.[43]
Under the law of the Twelve Tables, founded A.U.C. 300, woman
possessed the right of repudiation in marriage. The code itself was
ascribed to a woman of that primitive Athens founded and governed by
women long years previous to the date of modern Athens. The change in
woman’s condition for the worse under Christianity is very remarkable
and everywhere it is noticed. Among the Finns, before their conversion,
the mother of a family took precedence of the father in the rites of
domestic worship. Under the Angles, a wound inflicted upon a virgin was
punished with double the penalty of the same injury inflicted upon a
man, remarkable as showing the high esteem and reverence in which women
were held. Before the introduction of Christianity, the Germans bound
themselves to chastity in the marriage relation; under Catholicism the
wife is required to promise the devotion of her body to the marital
rite. German women served as priestesses of Hertha, and during the
time of Rome’s greatest power, Wala or Valleda,—this title being
significative of a supremely wise woman, a prophetess,—was virtual
ruler of the Germanic forces; Druses when about invading Germany was
repelled by her simple command to “Go Back.” But under Christianity
the German woman no longer takes part in public affairs, education is
denied, the most severe and degrading labor of field, streets and mine
falls upon her, while in the family she is serf to father, brother,
husband.
The women of ancient Scandinavia were treated with infinite respect;
breach of marriage promise was classed with perjury; its penalty was
outlawry. Marriage was regarded as sacred and in many instances the
husband was obliged to submit to the wife.[44] Those old Berserkers
reverenced their Alruna, or Holy Women, on earth and worshiped
goddesses in heaven, where, according to Scandinavian belief, gods and
goddesses sat together in a hall without distinction of sex.
The whole ancient world recognized a female priesthood, some
peoples, like the Roman, making national safety dependent upon their
ministration; others as in Egypt, according them pre-eminence in the
priestly office, reverencing goddesses as superior to gods; still
others as the Scandinavians, making no distinction in equality between
gods and goddesses; others governing the nation’s course through
oracles which fell from feminine lips, still others looking to the
Sibylline Books for like decision.[45] Those historians anxious to
give most credit to the humanizing effect of Christianity upon woman
are compelled to admit her superiority among pagan nations before the
advent of this religion.[46]
The Patriarchate under which Biblical history and Judaism commenced,
was a rule of men whose lives and religion were based upon passions
of the grossest kind, showing but few indications of softness or
refinement. Monogamous family life did not exist, but a polygamy whose
primal object was the formation of a clan possessing hereditary chiefs
ruling aristocratically. To this end the dominion of man over woman
and the birth of many children was requisite. To this end polygamy
was instituted, becoming as marked a feature of the Patriarchate as
monogamy was of the Matriarchate. Not until the Patriarchate were
wives regarded as property, the sale of daughters as a legitimate
means of family income, or their destruction at birth looked upon as
a justifiable act. Under the Patriarchate, society became morally
revolutionized, the family, the state, the form of religion entirely
changed. The theory of a male supreme God in the interests of force and
authority, wars, family discord, the sacrifice of children to appease
the wrath of an offended (male) deity are all due to the Patriarchate.
These were practices entirely out of consonance with woman’s thought
and life. Biblical Abraham binding Isaac for sacrifice to Jehovah,
carefully kept his intentions from the mother Sarah. Jephtha offering
up his daughter in accordance with his vow, allowing her a month’s life
for the bewailment of her virginity, are but typical of the low regard
of woman under the Patriarchate. During this period the destruction of
girl children became a widely extended practice, and infantile girl
murder the custom of many nations. During the Matriarchate all life
was regarded as holy; even the sacrifice of animals was unknown.[47]
The most ancient and purest religions taught sacrifice of the animal
passions as the great necessity in self-purification. But the
Patriarchate subverted this sublime teaching, materializing spiritual
truths, and substituting the sacrifice of animals, whose blood was
declared a sweet smelling savor to the Lord of Hosts.
Both infanticide and prostitution with all their attendant horrors
are traceable with polygamy,—their origin—to the Patriarchate or
Father-rule, under which Judaism and Christianity rose as forms of
religious belief. Under the Patriarchate woman has ever been regarded
as a slave to be disposed of as father, husband or brother chose.
Even in the most Christian lands, daughters have been esteemed
valuable only in proportion to the political or pecuniary advantage
they brought to the father, in the legal prostitution of an enforced
marriage. The sacrifice of woman to man’s baser passions has ever been
the distinguishing characteristic of the Patriarchate. But woman’s
degradation is not the normal condition of humanity, neither did it
arise from a settled principle of evolution, but is a retrogression,
due to the grossly material state of the world for centuries past, in
which it has lost the interior meaning or spiritual significance of its
own most holy words.
Jehovah signifies not alone the masculine and the feminine principles
but also the spirit or vivifying intelligence. It is a compound word
indicative of the three divine principles.[48] Holy Ghost, although
in Hebrew a noun of either gender, masculine, feminine, neuter,
is invariably rendered masculine by Christian translators of the
Bible.[49] In the Greek, from whence we obtain the New Testament,
spirit is of the feminine gender, although invariably translated
masculine. The double-sexed word, Jehovah, too sacred to be spoken by
the Jews, signified the masculine-feminine God.[50] The proof of the
double meaning of Jehovah, the masculine and feminine signification,
Father-Mother, is undeniable. Lanci, one of the great orientalists,
says:
Jehovah should be read from left to right, and pronounced
Ho-Hi; that is to say He-She (Hi pronounced He,) Ho in Hebrew
being the masculine pronoun and Hi the feminine. Ho-Hi
therefore denotes the male and female principles, the vis
genatrix.[51]
Kingsford says:
The arbitrary and harsh aspect under which Jehovah is chiefly
presented in the Hebrew Scriptures is due not to any lack of
the feminine element either in His name or in His nature, or
to any failure on the part of the inspired leaders of Israel
to recognize their equality, but to the rudimentary condition
of the people at large, and their consequent amenability
to the delineation of the stern side only of the Divine
Character.[52]
The Hebrew word _El Shaddai_, translated, “The Almighty” is still more
distinctively feminine than _Iah_, as it means “The Breasted God,” and
is made use of in the Old Testament whenever the especially feminine
characteristics of God are meant to be indicated.[53]
The story of the building of the tower of Babel and the subsequent
confusion of language possesses deep interior significance; the word
(Babel) meaning “God the Father” as distinct and separate from the
feminine principle. The confusion which has come upon humanity because
of this separation has been far more lamentable in its results than
a mere confounding of tongues.[54] In the earliest religions the
recognition of the feminine principle in the divinity is everywhere
found. “I am the Father and Mother of the Universe” said Krishna in the
Bhagavad Gita.
An Orphic hymn says: “Zeus is the first and the last, the head and the
extremities; from him have proceeded all things.” He is a man and an
immortal nymph i.e. the male and female element. The Sohar declares
“the ancient of the ancient has a form and has no form.”
The Holy Spirit, symbolized by a dove, is a distinctively feminine
principle—the Comforter—and yet has ever been treated by the Christian
Church as masculine, alike in dogmas propounded from the pulpit, and
in translations of the Scriptures. A few notable exceptions however
appear at an early date. Origen expressly referred to the Holy Ghost as
feminine, saying: “The soul is maiden to her mistress the Holy Ghost.”
An article upon the “Esoteric character of the Gospels” in Madam
Blavatsky’s _Lucifer_ (November 1887) says:
Spirit or the Holy Ghost was feminine with the Jews as most
ancient peoples and it was so with the early Christians;
Sophia of the Gnostics and the third Sephiroth, Binah (the
female Jehovah of the Cabalists,) are feminine principles
“Divine Spirit” or Ruach, “One is She the spirit of the Elohim
of Life,” is said in Sepher Yetzirah.[55]
An early canonical book of the New Testament known as “The Everlasting
Gospel” also as “The Gospel of the Holy Ghost” represents Jesus as
saying, “My mother the Holy Ghost, took me by the hair of my head up
into a mountain.”
The word _sacred_ simply meaning secret, having its origin as shown at
the time when knowledge was kept hidden from the bulk of mankind, only
to be acquired by initiation in the mysteries, so also the word _holy_
simply means whole, that is, undivided. In its ignorance, unwisdom,
and fear of investigation, mankind has allowed a division of the two
divine principles, male and female, to obtain firm hold in their
minds. Prejudice, which simply means prejudgment, a judgment without
proof, has long ruled mankind, owing chiefly to that bondage of the
will inflicted by a tyrannous self-seeking priesthood. But we have now
reached a period in history when investigation is again taking the
place of blind belief and the truth, capable of making man free, is
once more offered. It is through a recognition of the divine element of
motherhood as not alone inhering in the great primal source of life but
as extending throughout all creation, that it will become possible for
the world, so buried in darkness, folly and superstition, to practice
justice toward woman. Not legislation but education will bring about
the change; not external acts but internal thought. It is but a few
years since the acknowledgment of a feminine element even in plants was
regarded by the church as heretical. Yet though still perceiving but
partial truth, science now declares the feminine principle to inhere
in plants, rocks, gems, and even in the minutest atoms; thus in some
degree recognizing the occult axiom “As it is above, so it is below.”
_Chapter Two_
+Celibacy+
While the inferior and secondary position of woman early became an
integral portion of Christianity, its fullest efforts are seen in
Church teachings regarding marriage. Inasmuch as it was a cardinal
doctrine that the fall of Adam took place through his temptation
into marriage by Eve, this relation was regarded with holy horror as
a continuance of the evil which first brought sin into the world,
depriving man of his immortality.[1] It is a notable fact that the
expected millennium of a thousand years upon earth with its material
joys has ever had more attraction for Christians than the eternal
spiritual rapture of heaven. Many of the old Fathers taught that “the
world is a state of matrimony, but paradise of virginity.”[2] To such
extent was this doctrine carried it was declared that had it not have
been for the fall, God would have found some way outside of this
relation for populating the world, consequently marriage was regarded
as a condition of peculiar temptation and trial; celibacy as one of
especial holiness.
The androgynous theory of primal man found many supporters, the
separation into two beings having been brought about by sensual desire.
Jacob Boehme and earlier mystics of that class recognized the double
sexuality of God in whose image man was made. One of the most revered
ancient Scriptures, “The Gospel according to the Hebrews,” which was
in use as late as the second century of the Christian era, taught the
equality of the feminine in the Godhead; also that daughters should
inherit with sons. Thirty-three fragments of this Gospel have recently
been discovered. The fact remains undeniable that at the advent of
Christ, a recognition of the feminine element in the divinity had not
entirely died out from general belief, the earliest and lost books
of the New Testament teaching this doctrine, the whole confirmed by
the account of the birth and baptism of Jesus, the Holy Spirit,[3]
the feminine creative force, playing the most important part. It
was however but a short period before the church through Canons
and Decrees, as well as apostolic and private teaching, denied the
femininity of the Divine equally with the divinity of the feminine.
There is however abundant proof that even under but partial recognition
of the feminine principle as entering in the divinity, woman was
officially recognized in the early services of the church, being
ordained to the ministry, officiating as deacons, administering the
act of baptism, dispensing the sacrament, interpreting doctrines and
founding sects which received their names.[4]
The more mystical among priests taught that before woman was separated
from man, the Elementals[5] were accepted by man as his children
and endowed by him with immortality, but at the separation of the
androgynous body into the two beings Adam and Eve, the woman through
accident was also endowed with immortality which theretofore had
solely inhered in the masculine portion of the double-sexed being.
These mystics also taught that this endowment of woman with immortality
together with her capability of bringing new beings into existence also
endowed with immortal life, was the cause of intense enmity toward
her on the part of the Elementals, especially shown by their bringing
suffering and danger upon her at this period.